Welcome,
in this edition of our newsletter you’ll find:
🌱 Welcome to the Great Exhaustion or why we are living in a burnt out world
💧 Join us for the first ever noe experience, June 28-30 in Brandenburg, Germany
🪴 Poetry by Mary Oliver
Enjoy!
Your noe team
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🌱 Planting Seeds
In this section we share thoughts and concepts around empathy that have inspired us and made us think.
The Great Exhaustion - Navigating a burnt out world
How are you doing?Like, how are you really?
If you’re anything like us you’re mostly tired and somewhat exhausted. It feels like our battery is perpetually in low power mode and even now that the winter is finally over it is never fully charged. Literally, like a 3 year old iPhone.
According to McKinsey nearly half of employees report symptoms of burnout. Office workers seem to have retreated into a pervasive atmosphere of fatigue. At this stage, we’re in a post quiet-quitting world. Welcome to the great exhaustion.
Coined by writer and computer science professor Cal Newport, the great exhaustion can be explained by a general increase in digital communication specifically driven by the pandemic. A never ending flood of emails, zooms, teams and slack messages prevent us from ever switching off or having uninterrupted focus time. While always being on, our batteries get drained.
In our day to day we experience constant interaction with colleagues and friends, without ever really connecting. In the stream of information, we are too distracted to pause and listen, to empathize and show up for each other.
In short, this is your sign to turn on flight mode more often and to take the time to connect with people - maybe even in person.
💧 Watering the Mind
In this section we share updates from the noe team and concrete offers that allow you to build emotional intelligence and resilience skills.
Sign-up now for the first ever noe experience!
Picture early morning yoga sessions, interactive workshops, communal cooking, creative interventions and late night storytelling. All centered around a community of young adults who are motivated by driving change but can’t see how to anymore.
Having talked to many young professionals, possibly including you, over the past months, our key insights are:
Our peers are currently either burnt out or at risk of experiencing burnout as they lack time and space to self-regulate and find balance.
Young professionals like us are frustrated by their jobs that are often not sustainable, offer no support structures or opportunities for growth.
While pursuing a career and financial stability, young adults sacrifice impact, causing an estrangement from their purpose and a lack of direction.
To sum it up: We all feel pretty demotivated and lack energy to change things.
This is why we have created the noe experience - a weekend retreat that allows you to reset, connect with yourself and a community of like-minded individuals, as well as to rediscover the inner resources that allow you to drive systemic change.
Guided by our newly developed noe methodology the aims of the noe experience are to:
Foster a community of care that offers a longterm source of support for individual wellbeing and development.
Tune in to yourself, learn to practice self-compassion in order to identify your personal needs and discover your purpose.
Practice communicating your needs, learn how to foster effective communication with others and navigate conflict.
Connect your inner resources to your impact on the larger world and learn how to build communities for change.
In short: What can you expect?
A weekend in community, June 28-30 2024
A tribe of 10 participants from around the world
Co-living in Brandenburg, just outside of Berlin
Workshops around our noe methodology, connecting individual and communal resources to social change
All you need to do is apply until May 26!
Out of the applicants we’ll put together a cohort of 10 people that will join us for this first noe experience. After the selection we will provide you with further information on the location and logistics. Rest assured that you’ll have a lovely place to sleep, great food, and inspiring company!
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with any questions by emailing us at contact@networkofempathy.org
🪴 Vines of Community
In this space we foster connection and inspiration by sharing stories, poems, and thoughts of community members.
This month, Mareike chose the poem Wild Geese from Mary Oliver:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.